Using Eye-Tracking to Evaluate Visual Attention During the Encoding Stage of Social Information Processing of Dynamic Social Scenes in Children and Adolescents with ASD

Background: Individuals with ASDs have difficulties in perceiving and understanding social interactions. The Social Information Processing model, as developed by Crick and Dodge (1994) consists of five steps that operate in a circular manner, from the encoding of social cues, to the selection of an appropriate response. The model is the most widely accepted model to explain aggression in children, and the model has more recently been supported by research that indicates that it can be applied to social competence and difficulties more broadly. The first stage of the model involves the encoding of the sensory components of a social situation. There have only been two studies that have examined the Social Information Processing model in individuals with an ASD and both of these studies have found differences at this stage of social information processing.  Meyers and colleagues (2006) found that individuals with Asperger syndrome made more encoding errors than the typically developing comparison group. Embregts and colleagues (2009) found that relative to typically developing peers, individuals with PDD-NOS + mild ID encode more negative cues.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of the encoding stage of social information processing in individuals with ASD compared with typically developing peers.

Methods:  Participants range in age from 6 to 18 year and are divided into an ASD group (Asperger Syndrome/high-functioning autism) ( n=20) and a typically developing comparison group (n=20). Social information processing was assessed using the Social Information Processing Application (SIP-AP, innovation Research & Training, 2011), which required the participants to watch a series of 8 brief videos depicting social situations involving either hostile or ambiguous provocations. To assess encoding, participants were asked to describe what happened in the video. The Tobii Eyetracker was used to enhance the measurement of encoding of the social situation by recording where the participants were looking during each of the videos.  

Results:  Initial participants were consistent with the hypotheses that the ASD group will have more errors in encoding than the typically developing group. More specifically, the ASD group will be more likely to report negative social cues, and less likely to report non-hostile cues. The second hypothesis was that the ASD group will spend less time attending to the faces and more time attending to irrelevant aspects of the surrounding environment than will their typically developing counterparts. Data collection and analysis is continuing.

Conclusions:   This is the second study to incorporate eye-tracking technology with a social information processing paradigm and it is the first to use this methodology with individuals with an ASD. The results from this study will contribute greatly to the understanding of social difficulties in ASD and may help guide treatment planning. The eye-tracking results will provide clarity about where children with ASDs are looking in potentially provoking social situations, with an eye to perhaps teaching them where to attend in order to better understand social cues and social situations.

 

Funding: Canadian Institutes for Health Research